Microsoft Office 2003

JungleDisk is a WebDAV file sharing service running on the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). It appears when users are using Office 2003 SP3 on a Vista Business SP1 based system, they may not be able to open Microsoft Word and Excel files. The users experience an error similar to:

Could not open ‘http://2667/somebucket/some file.doc’

The JungleDisk Support site (KBID#: 300065) indicates installing the Windows Software Update for Web Folders (KB907306) and rebooting will fix the problem. Unfortunately the reported fix does not appear to work for numerous users. Additionally, connecting to the JungleDisk “bucket” using the naive Windows WebDAV client does not allow saving due to the “read-only” bug.

We discovered the easiest way to work around the Vista/Office 2003 WebDAV limitations was to use a substitute drive. Once the JungleDisk client loads and you can access the JungleDisk network drives, the following command can be use to connect:

subst NewDriveLetter: JungleDiskDriveLetter:\

For example, if the JungleDisk drive letter is “J:\”, you will run the following command to access the share:

subst k: j:\

You should then be able to open files from and save files to the “k:” drive directly.

When your system reboots, you will need to run the subst command again. For our users, we have created a batch file that deletes the virtual drive (subst k: /d) then re-creates it (subst k: j:\). After the user’s system has completely loaded, they double-click on the batch files to create accessible virtual drives.

Incidentally, upgrading to Office 2007 on Vista or running Office 2003 from Windows XP does not appear to have any issues.